Windows 7 and Bose Companion 5 speaker system losing sound intermittently.

Hi Lee, 

Which driver did you use to install your USB 2 port?

BTW Happy New Year.

Dave

I had the exact same issue.I corrected the problem by installing a USB 2 port.The Bose Companion needs to run on its own port.Once I did that I haven't had any issues with it since.Its been a few months now of trouble free sound.

Hope this helps

Ocan.

Like wise I am having the same problem here, XP with BOSE Companion 5. My experience with USB have not been a pleasant one. During one of the incident (long story short), I discovered that the USB port performance itself was erratic and unstable. I had 8 ports and all of them perform differently. What I did was simply to change to another port and it work fine.

The last and final alternative is to use the 3.5mm analogue jack port to connect to the sound card. USB were never a stable hardware since day 1.

I would be a little more convinced of a hardware failure if the same thing happened with the Vista OS. The Bose was solid as a rock until I upgraded this platform to Win-7 Pro. This is not a random failure. I can produce it at will by simply rebooting Win-7 Pro, or by power cycling the Bose. When the sound crackles and drops out, the software never sees it. Tests appear to run as seen by the green sound-level bar. If I disconnect the Bose from the USB, then the OS knows it's gone. But simply plugging it back in to the USB returns me to the same state (no sound). One symptom that I can't reproduce at will is a high-pitched tone coming from the speakers during boot......sometimes. If I haven't used the speakers before the next shutdown, often I'll get the same squeal for 10-15 seconds. That, in itself doesn't get distorted when booting or shutting down. And it's not consistent. Sometimes, just logically changing what speakers are the default speakers and/or the default communications device can cause the squeal to start. That appears to indicate that, if left alone, the squeal would continue indefinitely. The volume of the squeal can be adjusted by the volume level bars in the volume mixer. What the source is, I haven't the foggiest. Since it's not easily reproducible, without drawing up a test plan to include all possible scenarios or sequence of events, the source may be unknown for a long time. I do know that by using different USB ports and buses, the behavior is the same. The only time I thought that I'd cracked this nut was when I disabled ALL audio devices, and bring up one at a time. The OS then made the Bose the default audio device, and not the default composite device which it originally was configured for during the OS load. That in itself moved the Bose out from under a Root Hub, and made it  USB Composite Device. Then, the Bose started to work normally. I had played several CD's in succession with no issues whatsoever. Then, over time and after who knows how many reboots, the Bose slowly started to crackle again. Within a couple of days, the sound ceased altogether. Insuring that the logical configuration hadn't changed in terms of the USB structure, I tried the same tests as I had previously run. I got the same results as when I first loaded Win-7 Pro. Again, a reboot will bring the speakers back, as would a power cycle of the Bose, but will start crackling more and more until it cuts out. A very minimal level of sound will extend the amount of time before the crackling starts, and also the rate of degradation.

Another call to Bose gave me some information that I did not know, as well s another experiment to try. Part of the power-cycle process includes disconnecting the puck from the sub-woofer, after removing power. Wait 30 or more seconds, plug in the puck, and apply power to the Bose. I'm not sure that I see the logic there. But that's the official procedure. Bose also recommended that I run an audio cable from the PC to the input of the puck. After a software adjustment, I got good stereo sound out of the Bose. No issues at all. But I didn't want to give up the Dolby 5.1 configuration. Once back to using the USB configuration, the same problem came back. When I ran the Dolby 5.1 test, the animated speakers reflected actual sound tones for that configuration. On the second pass of the same test, the sound degraded to zero after starting to crackle, although the test was perfectly happy and continued to assume that the Bose was performing as it should. The OS showed no issues with the Bose, still had contact via USB, and showed an error code of 0 in the properties/details.

While on the phone with Bose, they informed me that I could send in the sub-woofer for a flat $50 (I believe) repair. However, they still don't believe the Bose is at fault since it worked just fine under Vista. If it worked fine in their lab, I'd be out $50 and still be stuck with the problem which apparently has been a known issue in one form or another since 2009.